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Blogging Custom and Commitment

When the NBI came around I was desperately thinking of things to write, advice to give new bloggers in regards to what I’ve learnt and I really couldn’t think of anything important that either I haven’t said already and someone else has. The most important piece of advice I will continue to give is just to be yourself; write want you want, how you want and when you want. That’s the key to blogging. It’s the way of maintaining that interest in your own little space of the Internetz.

There are a thousand other bits to think about of course, that will overwhelm you if you let it. Already there is a wealth of advice articles about various parts of blogging to think about and remember and that often times conflict with each other. And that’s just for this years Newbie Blogger Initiative. Even I look around at some of the amazing bloggers around in the community and see talks about staying true to a ritual for blogging and creating a regular time to write. Things like having a post Schedule or even something completely alien to me like sentence structure.

You want to know my ritual? If I have a moment of inspiration, a written idea in my notepad or am between games with a certain thought I open up the WordPress page and start writing. Sometimes my phone. There is often little actual planning involved in when I write and, except for my link round-up post there is no defined day for anything to happen… even that has been changed quite often. I often won’t know what exactly I’m going to write until it’s finished and it might not even be close to the original thought after I’ve finished with it. I will then give it a read through, a spell check and maybe another read if it’s lucky and push publish. Post complete.

While I’m writing this at the moment I have 7 tabs open and the T’V running ( Regular show atm) while thinking about a number of other things. My concentration in a single post will wax and wane to the point were something that might have taken a half an hour to write will take me the night. I might end up not even bothering to finish it, press delete and go on playing or doing whatever it was before I started. It’s nowhere near the perfect situation to write and not even close compared to the conditions of my fellow bloggers but for some reason it works for me. I don’t aim for perfection, hell, I aim well below average at times just because I often have better, more interesting things I could be doing. This isn’t the domain of some professional industry voice and not one that aims to be, just somewhere to post my inner ramblings.

Somehow though, after what will nearly be two years I’ve now amassed 500 posts, I was going to make a special post about that but then couldn’t be bothered haha. That’s pretty huge. Going by my lack of formality and planning I would expect maybe a couple posts, if that a week but I’m running an average of several. That’s insane when I think about it. I always have a lot of ideas I want to write about, eventually and there always seems to be things happening that I could discuss but the main thing that keeps me blogging at this stage is some sense of obligation. Weirdly enough not to my readers though. It’s definitely nice to have that extra traffic and the community is wonderful but in the end my obligation comes down to maintaining my corner of the internet.

I’ve grown rather fond of this little space and in a short amount of time it has became more a part of my consciousness. Yes, getting all meta at this stage but its kinda true. This site is me; my personality infects it, my interests adorn it’s walls and my ideas inhabit every single inch. A large part of who I am extends into this space and continuing that, at this point is more a deep craving to write and express. To maintain and also grow what I’ve created. Now it is still flexible, I go a while without writing sometimes but in the end that feeling keeps growing, stronger and louder until I do. I am obliged to fulfil that.

Now, this ended up completely different than I originally thought and I have no idea what anyone is supposed to get out of it. I guess we all have our own reasons for blogging and the process with which we go about that will be unique to you.

I realize that I could be better at blogging, but for me it’s just a bit of fun and I like having my own space to ramble and be myself. Maybe all of the blogging tips are more important if you actually want to make money through it, but I just want to make friends, enjoy writing and share some of my creativity (having an outlet for my over active mind is also useful to me.) It’s interesting to hear that you don’t use a schedule or anything. I’ve heard a lot of advice saying that you have to use a schedule and post about all the same things, but I get random urges to write about certain subjects when they come to me. I write each idea down to form a list so that if I dry up for ideas another time I can pick one to keep me going. It can also take me a while to finish writing a post. Well done for keeping up with this blog for so long and keep it up, you’ve done a really good job. 😀

yeh, i think they are important but only if you really want to make something bigger, get more views and more followers. I just write for the sake of it and that’s my main focus. Making friends, sahring opinions and being a part of the community is huge too… at least it is now anyway.

I have a long list hidden away in my notebook too, some i have written others where i might wait for the right time or the motivation. There’s heaps to write about. I tend to take a while to write certain posts too, sometimes days for the really long ones but i keep chipping away until finished and then pretty much post straight away. I don’t see the point in holding back posts, would much rather get feedback when the idea is fresh in my mind too, that way I tend to reply better.